ANSA Mer­chant Bank’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gre­go­ry Hill says strate­gi­cal­ly, this coun­try needs to have a clear plan in paving the way for­ward.

Hav­ing a bud­get, he said, is not a plan but rather a “state­ment on in­come and ex­pen­di­ture.”

“To have a plan, you have to have a very good un­der­stand­ing of where you are in the con­text of the world and where the fu­ture is go­ing to be,” Hill ex­plained while speak­ing at Am­cham T&T’s Eco­nom­ic out­look fo­rum 2023 held at the Hilton yes­ter­day ti­tled, “Re­cal­i­brate and Re­fresh.”

Ac­cord­ing to Hill, T&T al­ready has the in­tel­lec­tu­al ca­pac­i­ty to put to­geth­er such a plan.

How­ev­er, he em­pha­sised that it is “crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant now as a na­tion” to have a dis­tinct ob­jec­tive not­ing.

“What we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing now is a bit of a rev­o­lu­tion...The world hit pause with the pan­dem­ic and it has been kick-start­ed some­what and it’s re­fram­ing what and how we want to in­ter­act with each oth­er not on­ly as in­di­vid­u­als but al­so as coun­tries.”

Ac­cord­ing to Hill, there’s al­so a re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of geopol­i­tics and trans­for­ma­tion tak­ing place in var­i­ous spheres in­clud­ing en­er­gy, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and ed­u­ca­tion.

“We are see­ing a fo­cus on con­scious cap­i­tal in terms of our plan­et, pur­pose, peo­ple and pros­per­i­ty so we are go­ing to see more change in the next ten years than we have seen in the last 100 years. So it’s a unique point in time and we have a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty in front of us as a coun­try be­cause we get to be part of this new rev­o­lu­tion,” Hill added.

T&T is al­ready fac­ing a host of chal­lenges in­clud­ing a run-away crime rate, in­creas­ing in­fla­tion, and sky­rock­et­ing food prices which were all brought to the fore dur­ing the event.

Ac­cord­ing to Hill, it’s not just hav­ing a plan but con­sid­er­ing all the fac­tors to ex­e­cute and build up­on this for the long term.

Fur­ther, he rec­om­mend­ed the na­tion do a “self-as­sess­ment” of where it wants to be and then take those ac­tions “right now” to po­si­tion it­self.

Za­ck Nadur, part­ner, strate­gies and trans­ac­tions, EY Caribbean, who was al­so on the pan­el said hav­ing a plan and shap­ing the coun­try’s fu­ture is not the sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment but the pri­vate sec­tor has an equal right to do so.

He cit­ed Am­cham T&T and oth­er busi­ness en­ti­ties as the voice of the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

“And us tak­ing that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of do­ing our part with col­lab­o­ra­tion in mind...let us not wait to be told. Let us be part of the voice for ini­ti­at­ing that change and be­ing part of what to­mor­row will look like,” Nadur ad­vised.

Hav­ing a plan al­so re­quires en­gage­ment from all, echoed Greer Quan, CEO, Caribbean, Pan Amer­i­can Life In­sur­ance Group.

This, she added, is im­por­tant in hav­ing “buy-in” for the fu­ture agen­da.

“It is one thing to ar­tic­u­late it but it’s an­oth­er to en­sure the suc­cess of it,” Quan added.

On whether the coun­try was re­gress­ing as a na­tion in terms of its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion she ac­knowl­edged that glob­al­ly, COVID in­duced dig­i­tal progress.

From a busi­ness per­spec­tive or­gan­i­sa­tions, she not­ed, sur­vived in the frame­work of re­stric­tions adding that there has been sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in the in­sur­ance in­dus­try to en­sure there’s tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment to meet the needs of cus­tomers.

How­ev­er, she said more can be done lo­cal­ly.

“But when you think about it from a glob­al scale, look­ing at what Trinidad is do­ing ver­sus the glob­al mar­ket­place there’s sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for im­prove­ment,” Quan rec­om­mend­ed adding, “Would that be con­sid­ered as re­gres­sion? Maybe I would say the rate of progress is not as swift.”

How­ev­er, Nadur re­it­er­at­ed that the time for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion “is now.”

It’s a “strate­gic im­per­a­tive,” he added.

While Nadur said some have been slow to act he did not see re­gres­sion but rather pro­gres­sion.

“It is be­com­ing a way of do­ing busi­ness as we have al­so in­cor­po­rat­ed changes with­in our own ex­e­cu­tion of our work and du­ties by work­ing re­mote­ly. The tech­nol­o­gy and the whole dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion move­ment was ac­tu­al­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed be­cause of the ad­vent of COVID,” Nadur ex­plained.

He added de­pend­ing on the size, sale and com­plex­i­ty of the or­gan­i­sa­tions these will dic­tate the speed of trans­for­ma­tion while en­cour­ag­ing those “on the fence” to move quick­er.

On a larg­er scale in pro­pelling T&T in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na, Hill said more fo­cus ought to be placed on in­te­gra­tion.

“Our oil and gas sec­tor is heav­i­ly in­te­grat­ed in the glob­al com­mod­i­ty space and as a coun­try, we ben­e­fit from things that take place around the world but we al­so suf­fer as well be­cause the en­er­gy sec­tor is a com­mod­i­ty cy­cle,” Hill said.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the sec­tor’s rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion in mov­ing to­wards green­er fu­els means fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ty not on­ly for the coun­try but al­so for its peo­ple.

“We should be piv­ot­ing that skill-set in the green en­er­gy in­dus­try that is go­ing to come and as a na­tion, we need to strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tion our­selves... and that’s where the op­por­tu­ni­ty lies,” Hill added.

Dur­ing the talks, em­pha­sis was al­so placed on en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial, and gov­er­nance (ESG) which Nadur not­ed have gained mo­men­tum in re­cent years.

He said ESG has be­come al­most like an “un­spo­ken ex­pec­ta­tion” that ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers will have of any com­pa­ny.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said when there are scarce in­vest­ment dol­lars, com­pa­nies must think about where can they get the biggest bang for their buck.

“And we are go­ing through so much change and there’s com­pe­ti­tion for the in­vest­ment of these dol­lars, do­ing some­thing that is cor­po­rate­ly so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble or to meet an ex­pec­ta­tion that ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers have of the en­ti­ty is some­thing that pro­vides a head­wind to com­pa­nies that have com­pe­ti­tion for their in­vest­ment dol­lars,” Nadur ex­plained.

With that be­ing said, if ES­Gs are not in place, he added, then there’s the like­li­hood of be­ing for­sak­en by ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers as Nadur stressed the im­por­tance of do­ing good and be­ing pur­pose­ful.

“This is not our nat­ur­al de­fault as hu­mans but this is the ex­pec­ta­tion that so­ci­ety is now go­ing to hold us to a high­er stan­dard and that is some­thing busi­ness­es ought to be cog­nisant of and to start to con­sid­er, slow­ly and you will see the nat­ur­al mo­men­tum,” he added.